


Under A Darkening Sky

by nesrynfaliq



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas, a court of mist
Genre: ACOTAR - Freeform, AU, Canon Divergence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Smut, bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 06:20:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6842377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesrynfaliq/pseuds/nesrynfaliq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: 'Can I kiss you?' ACOTAR AU; Feyre and Lucien allow Calamnai to overwhelm them enough to tear down the barriers between them.</p>
<p>My whole body has tensed with his closeness, his hunger, how I’d made him lose control with just my words. My heart pounds in my chest a relentless hammer against the anvil of my caging ribs. Heat floods my core and anticipation shreds through me, howling in time with the still pulsing drums beyond the rhythm matching my heartbeat and his.</p>
<p>But then he stops, bracing himself a above me, his mouth so close to mine that I’m swallowing the heat of his breath, inhaling the rich, smooth scent of him every time I breathe.</p>
<p>I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong; why he’s stopped, but his eyes are fixed on me, searching for something in me and I can barely stand it. I want to grab his tunic and pull him against me, feeling him surrounding me properly without this bare inch of space between us that feels like a gaping chasm with how much I want his body pressed flush into mine and I can’t understand his hesitation, this pause in the fluid, consuming motion that was sweeping me into him, claiming me as surely as a tide claims the shore as its own each dawn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under A Darkening Sky

Under A Darkening Sky

I can see him trembling, the beating of the drums, the heartbeat of the world shattering around us, is pulsing visibly through his body. The air between us feels too thin, as though there isn’t enough of it for me to breathe, as though the pounding tension of Calamnai is stripping it from my lungs.

I can feel it to. Not to the same extent as Lucien whose whole body is quivering where he stands, sweat gleaming on his sun-kissed skin, his red eye blazing like the bonfires we’d left behind, sparking when he looks at me, but it burns in my blood too, amplifying things I had worked so hard to tamp down over the past few weeks, like a long smouldering hay barn flaring up in the presence of a wildfire.

Lucien’s russet eye is tinged with a hunger I’ve only ever seen flickers of before; the stirring of a dormant beast he keeps carefully leashed within himself but tonight...His gaze, once unsettling with his mismatched eyes but now familiar and oddly reassuring, as it had been when I had caught sight of it earlier before he had whisked me back here and then explained everything Tamlin had not, slides down to my lips. There it lingers.

I find myself unconsciously mirroring him, my own eyes finding the slim cut of his lips and I can already imagine my brush tracing the shape of them onto canvas, and more, I can imagine what they might feel like against mine. Something is making me bold; too bold; too wild, but it excites me too much to cage it now.

I’m about to take a shuddering step closer to him which, what with our current proximity, will almost certainly carry me over some line or boundary we had so far maintained. But just as I begin to move, he takes a small step back, as though sensing my intentions and the consequences of that one small movement, “I should get back,” he says, swallowing hard, his words trembling with the strain it takes to get them out.

“Can’t you stay?” I blurt out before I can stop myself, before I’ve really thought what those words mean; what I’d like them to mean.

Lucien blinks. There’s so much tension in his body, like a bowstring that’s been drawn back too far, pulled to tight, and is fast approaching the point it will snap. All it would take is another gentle pull.

“I want to,” he whispers, his confession uttered in the same tone as my blurted question: the kind that implies that he too is speaking without thinking, from some deeper, baser instinctual part of himself, the part he has to force down to say, “But I...I...”

The hesitation, the faltering, when he’s usually so good with words, weaving them around me with such seamless ease, his typically arrogant self-assuredness is gone and it’s that more than anything else that makes me take those few steps towards him, clearing the invisible wall we had erected around ourselves.

My voice is lower and huskier than usual when I meet and hold his eyes and breathe, “Say it.”

Even I’m surprised by the command in my tone – the need to hear his voice wrap at last around the words he’s trying so hard to hold back from me.

“What?” he asks, plainly playing for time, we both know exactly what I mean, what I want from him.

I move in nearer again. There’s now only a few bare feet and the charged atmosphere separating us from one another.

“Whatever you’ve been wanting to say for weeks that you can’t ignore tonight,” I murmur, deliberately holding his gaze.

My eyes never leave him but I still nearly miss the flicker of motion that signals his movement as he surges into me with all the fluid grace and supple power of a storm descending from the heavens to cleave me into pieces before it, strip me bare and unmake all that I am.

He closes the last of the distance I’d left between us; unable to take those last few steps; in a few long, sure strides and his body crashes into mine like an ocean wave slamming into a cliff face, ready and braced for the impact, welcoming the familiar passion of it. He only stops when my back hits the wall, the impact cushioned by the strong arm he slides around my waist a moment before I collide with the solid surface.

Both of us are breathing hard, as though we’ve been sparring for hours when he cradles my head in his hand, fingers sliding deeply into my thick hair, the roots of a tree anchoring themselves in the sure ground, all in the same single fluid motion; the same deliberate way water gushes down a mountainside.

My whole body has tensed with his closeness, his hunger, how I’d made him lose control with just my words. My heart pounds in my chest a relentless hammer against the anvil of my caging ribs. Heat floods my core and anticipation shreds through me, howling in time with the still pulsing drums beyond the rhythm matching my heartbeat and his.

But then he stops, bracing himself a above me, his mouth so close to mine that I’m swallowing the heat of his breath, inhaling the rich, smooth scent of him every time I breathe.

I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong; why he’s stopped, but his eyes are fixed on me, searching for something in me and I can barely stand it. I want to grab his tunic and pull him against me, feeling him surrounding me properly without this bare inch of space between us that feels like a gaping chasm with how much I want his body pressed flush into mine and I can’t understand his hesitation, this pause in the fluid, consuming motion that was sweeping me into him, claiming me as surely as a tide claims the shore as its own each dawn.

He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my cheek, his thumb lightly caressing the skin as he looks into my eyes in a way that suggests he finds something in them he’s been looking for for centuries and then, making his faltering immediately clear, “Can I kiss you?” he rasps out, voice hoarse.

His eyes are wide, starved, half-wild with longing but he’s hesitating...hesitating _for me_. With the magic burning in his blood he wants to be sure, quite sure that I’m sure, that I’m with him.

I nod desperately managing to gasp out a frantic, “Yes,” to him.

I’ve never been so damned sure of anything in my life. I want this; I want him- _need_ him. I think he reads that in my eyes at last, in my voice, in my body because he lets himself snap then, loose that beast he’s been containing now that he has my permission.

His lips descend on mine but not in the way I had expected, had thought I’d demanded from him. There’s something tentative in the way his lips murmur against mine, despite my encouragement, as though he’s giving me time to come to my senses and reconsider, giving me the option to change my mind and pull away from him.

But the magic of Fire Night searing through the air and burning my blood has little to do with my desire for him – it only made me brave enough to reach for it at last. I move away from the wall he had pressed me in to and urge my body against his instead, coaxing, letting him know it’s okay, I’m sure, I’m ready.

The hesitation seems off – he’s usually so confident, so self-assured and seemingly heedless of his words and deeds. Maybe Tamlin had been wrong, maybe the other night, that dying faerie, had unsettled him in a way he’s hidden until now; shaken a part of him I’m only just seeing as he lowers some of those walls he must have surrounded himself after everything he’s endured.

I take the hand he has braced flat against the wall and place it gently on my hip. His long, deft fingers squeeze and tighten , instinctively drawing me closer. I kiss him a little harder, my lips encouraging his to part for my tongue and when I press it into his mouth he moans softly into me and his body shudders and sends me back against the wall, his full weight now pinning me to it.

I sense him flinch, the walls that instinct throws up to protect him, to protect me, and I wrap my arm around his chest, telling him without words that I’m alright, asking him not to stop. He relaxes against me, letting me guide him into me. He deepens the kiss, the tension flooding from him again and his body melts against mine, as seeking to meld us seamlessly together until there’s no telling where I end and he begins.

When we break apart, breathing hard, he strokes my cheek with the tips of two fingers, his russet eye glimmering like glowing embers and he whispers my name into the gathering darkness around us.

I grab his face between my hands and pull him down to kiss me again. I can’t help it. The feel of his lips on mine, soft and gentle, the heat of his mouth, the taste of him is all so intoxicating, so consuming, so addictive that after only one kiss all I want is more, all the while knowing I can never have enough.

This time he responds with the same level of fierceness, backing me against the wall, jolting our bodies together and deepening the kiss. My fingers curl around the front of his tunic and I pull him in even harder against me, wanting his body surrounding mine, wanting to feel him around me, towering over me, trusting him, knowing that I’m safe with him.

His fingers tug gently, experimentally on my hair and I let out a soft groan. He smirks onto my lips and does it again. I push him, sending him staggering back and he breaks the kiss, alarming flashing across his face. Reaching down I take his hand in mine, squeezing gently to reassure him as I do so and lead him from the room, tugging him with me, looking back to encourage him to follow.

He does and I pull him into the nearest bedroom, marked onto the little map of the manner I had made, not knowing or caring who it belongs to. It’s not mine or Lucien’s but I don’t care and it seems that neither does he because he makes no move to steer me elsewhere.

I coax him down to kiss me again and let my fingers start picking at the small, silver fastenings of his tunic. Lucien smiles faintly at my urgency but catches my wrists gently but firmly in his hands, stopping me, encouraging my arms around him instead.

I oblive him and he smiles at me again, a softness in the gesture that’s at odds with the usual sharpness of his trademark grin. Then he kisses me, gentler than the rough drum beats that echo in time with the pounding of our hearts, but it’s deeper this time and there’s an intensity that makes my soul shiver in answer to him.

My arms tighten around his chest and I pull him in closer, wanting to feel of his body against mine again, missing that heat, that proximity he had let me taste in the dining room. I reach up and tangle my fingers through his long red hair, savouring the silken texture, the rich colour, seeing how I might paint it, how I might capture him in this moment, burning and eternal and barely contained; all for me.

“Feyre,” he murmurs against my lips before he kisses me again, “ _Feyre_ ,” the way he says my name sounds like music, some half-remembered melody he hasn’t heard in centuries but longs to learn once more.

Lucien draws away slightly, peppering kisses along my jaw, to my ear, and then down, hovering just over my neck. His breath is hot as it ghosts against my skin. His eyes flick up to mine, needing to see the answer to his next words in them before he’ll proceed, “You’re sure?”

I gently cup his cheek in my hand, wondering if he knows how much it means that, after everything he told me about the Rite, he makes this a choice, and explicitly my own. I nod to him, slow and certain, “Yes,” I murmur to him, the certainty of it strong in every word, every breath.

I trust him. I feel safe with him; more so for the fact that he stopped and asked that question.

“I’m sure. I’m sure, Lucien, please,” the last word escapes without my permission, wrapped in a desperate, breathless whisper and he responds at once.

His lips brush lightly against my neck and he lets them feather it in several different places until he finds a spot that makes me shiver, my back arching and a feral grin stretches his lips that makes my knees tremble. Then he begins to kiss me there, slow and intense, until my fingers have wound tightly through his hair and I’m moaning faintly, my head tilted back to rest against the wall behind me to grant him better access.

When I gasp his name to the waiting heavens his lips pause. A protest, a plea to continue builds in my throat but dies an instant later when his deft, sure fingers begin to undress me. I mirror him, my hands returning to the buttons of his tunic and this time he makes no move to stop me.

We move together, as though we’ve done this a thousand times before, as though we’ve perfected this pattern of movements, an intimate dance we both know better than ourselves because it’s driven by something more than we are, something deeper than we can ever comprehend, its fluidity interrupted only for lingering touches of bare skin, kisses pressed to the areas most recently exposed, unable to wait until this ritual is complete to touch each other.

It continues in that way until we both stand utterly naked before each other. His eyes slide slowly down my body, drinking in every curve and dip, every slight blemish or scar. It’s hunger, the look he gives me, lupine and feral but he never makes me feel vulnerable, like pretty, not after the concern he’s shown. Under his gaze I feel a wolf too; not a doe to be consumed by him, an equal, the darkness in my soul calling to his and offering eternity.

I let my eyes wander down his body in turn, mapping it out the way I would a canvas before I let myself touch it.  Muscled and toned, as I had expected, but also peppered with layers of old scars, a visible catalogue of his life spread out before me, each line and shape and broken edge telling me his story the way lines of text in a novel might have done. But here I only see the darkness, the pain, the things he’s suffered and endured and survived. I want to feel the light that still lives beneath his battered skin.

Stepping towards him I gently run my fingers down the remnant of a particularly long, deep gash, exploring the few ragged inches of him with a tenderness this body seems unaccustomed to; may have been allowed to forget entirely over the centuries since he lost his lower and mate.

He swallows hard when I make eye contact with him again but doesn’t speak; nor do I. At least not with words.

A shiver ripples across me, my skin flaring in protest at the sudden draught that whispers through the darkening room. Lucien responds before the tremor has finished tingling through my spine. He moves in to me and wraps me in his arms, nothing separating us now but sweat and skin and heat that envelopes me.

When he kisses me again I kiss him back and press my body harder into his, never feeling I can have enough of this, enough of him, wanting to eliminate every gap between us, however small, until our bodies fit perfectly together, a cohesive whole that makes me sure I’ll never be alone again; not with him.

I coax us back towards the large four poster bed at the centre of the room, slowly, allowing myself what I now understand Lucien has been doing with me: savouring every second of this, every breath, every heartbeat of mine that thunders in time with his.

When the backs of my legs collide with the edge of the bed Lucien lifts me up into his arms then tenderly lays me down, never breaking the flow of smooth, fluid movements that have brought us to this point together.

He eases himself down onto the bed above me and kisses me again but his lips don’t linger on mine. Instead they descend to that spot on my neck he used to torment me earlier and then to my collar where he lets his teeth drag over my skin, then my breasts where he takes his time, so much that my body shakes beneath him and I cry out before his lips move to my stomach and naval then lower.

His hungry, clever kisses are peppered along the insides of my thighs, trailing lazily higher with every shuddering breath I take. He pauses at the apex of my thighs and looks up at me, his eyes meeting mine, his eyes widen slightly, enquiring as his fingers brush gently over my centre.

_Bastard_. And I know he reads the frustrated curse in my eyes from the smirk that he gives me, widening his eyes.

“Lucien,” I whisper, desperately, all I’m capable of right now, my skin glimmering with sweat like polished marble coated with oil, my chest heaving as I struggle to remember how to breathe, “ _Lucien_ , “ I whine, having no words in my head other than that, an exclamation of pleasure, and command, and prayer for more all at once.

His hungry mouth wanders between my legs. I fist one hand in the too smooth silk sheets, the other I wind through his hair, for support not to guide him. His lips know just where to kiss and what to do and his tongue: damn him his tongue is going to be the death of me.

Heat and pleasure radiate through me from the place where he kisses but Lucien is clearly in no hurry. Every flick of his tongue causes my spine to arch from the bed but it’s never quite enough to finish me which he knows full well.

“Lucien,” I murmur, the word a hopeless gasp of breath, almost lost amidst my moans and panting, “Lucien. Lucien, please.”

He pauses. I swear.

He chuckles and blinks innocently up at me, “Yes, Feyre?” he asks as though he has no idea every inch of my body is a bowstring he’s drawn back inch by inch that’s now begging for him to give it the release it needs while his fingers draw lazy circles on my thighs.

In answer I tug sharply on his hair. I expect a snarling growl to fill the room but he just smirks at me again an instant before his mouth descends between my thighs again and a cracked cry is drawn from me a moment later as my climax hits me. Lucien’s only response is to grab my hips and pull me even harder against him and my moan stutters and dies, incoherent words spilling from me as, less than a minute later, my body peaks for him again.

Feebly I pull at his hair, urging him to stop, unable to take any more. He props himself up on his forearms, watching me with a smugness I’d snarl at if it wasn’t well warranted as he crawls up to lie beside me. He softly strokes my hair back from my sweaty face, murmuring to me in the dark, a satisfied smirk tugging at his lips as he leans down to softly press his lips to mine.

As soon as I calm down enough I grab him and kiss him so roughly that it shocks me, at the feeling he’s inspired in me, at how _alive_ I feel with him, more than in years. Every inch of my body is crackling with energy and desire for him, “I want more.”

This time I do manage to coax a low, feral snarl from him before he kisses me again. He slides his fingers between my legs, groaning at how wet I am for him and then carefully positions himself above me. Lucien’s fingers twine through my own and I find a silent question in his eyes. I nod again, reaching up to kiss him as he enters me, squeezing my hand tightly as he does so, his lips tearing from mine to gasp out my name.

Then he kisses me and starts to move inside me and I cry out his name in turn. Every thrust splinters another part of the walls we’ve each built up around our hearts and leaves me barer than before. Every kiss coaxes me to fall deeper inside him, pulls more of me from inside myself. Every touch of his hands on my skin, every time our bodies collide our souls reach out to each other, the ragged edges catch and tangle and beg to be closer as we cross every line and boundary we had established between us.

And I welcome it.

I welcome every thrust, every kiss, every touch, every breathy moan of mine that mingles with his answering gasp in the air between us. I welcome the crumbling of the isolating walls, welcome the escape, the freedom, the selfish feeling that burns through my body and drowns me in him.

When I look up into his face again I can see the strain of self-control etched there, what it’s taking him to hold back the power that ripples through him for my sake, what it costs not to give me everything. But everything is what I want. Everything is what I _need._ And I trust him to give it to me, to sever that last barrier between us and let us surrender to one another entirely.

I reach up and wrap my arms around his chest, pulling him closer so I can kiss him. I bite at this bottom lip when I pull away and graze my teeth along his jaw until I reach his ear and then I whisper, “Stop holding back.”

He looks down at me, both eyes wide and full of something close to awe. Then he kisses me. He kisses me in a way unlike any he has tonight, unlike any I’ve ever experienced and I understand. He claims me. And I claim him right back.

The final wall separating us shatters entirely and our souls burst and burn with pleasure even as our bodies do, delighting in the union of our two begins.

As we both draw nearer our climax his rhythm, so smooth and controlled before becomes more erratic and desperate as we cling to each other. My nails scrape along the length of his spine, marking him as pleasure surges through me and he growls and bites my neck in answer. Still moving into me, our hips crashing together as I meet each thrust he cups my cheek in a callused hand, tilting my chin up.

“Look at me, Feyre,” he pants and I do, I look straight into his eyes, into the dark, haunted soul behind them that he usually hides so well before I come around him, crying out his name as he buries his face against my neck and places my name against my skin like a tattoo; saying it over and over again as he climaxes with me.

Afterwards, we lie panting together, his arm draped lazily around my shoulders. The drums of Calamnai still pound in the distance but somehow the steady beating of Lucien’s heart has drowned them out to nothing but a faint echo.

Neither of us makes any move to return to our own rooms, to leave this careful company and the warmth of each other. I close my eyes, breathing deeply, inhaling his scent down into my lungs. He shifts slightly beneath me and I open an eye to look at him, “You don’t have to leave do you?” I ask him, trying to keep the faint tinge of pleading from my words, not relishing the idea of him leaving me to see to Tamlin.

“No,” he says quietly, his fingers gently squeezing my shoulder, “No, I can stay,” his metal eye narrows on me and he adds wryly, “Unless-“

Stay,” is all I say, resting my head possessively on his chest. A faint smile tugs at his lips at that.

****

I’m violently wakened a few hours later, pushed so roughly away from Lucien that I’m in the midst of grabbing for the dagger he had given him that I sleep beside, thinking we’re being attacked before I realise we’re quite alone in the silence.

That’s when I look at Lucien.

He’s pushed himself to the end of the bed, the sheets bunched and tangled around his waist, hunched over himself, the few deep scars on his back stretching taut. His face is buried between his hands.

“Lucien,” I murmur tentatively, swallowing past my mouthful of fear.

I know better than to try and reach out to him, know that any contact will only make him flinch away from me as though I’ve branded him with hot irons. His whole body is shaking so violently that I wish I could touch him, comfort him, help him somehow, but I force myself to stay still and away from him, giving him the physical space he needs.

“Lucien,” I say again, my voice as gentle as I can make it but I don’t think he truly hears me.

“This was a mistake,” he rasps, his tone so full of disgust and self-loathing that I flinch, “We shouldn’t have, _I_ shouldn’t have-“ he mutters, more to himself than to me but I can’t stop myself asking shakily,

“Did I do something wrong?”

A stupid, childish question given whatever nightmare he must have had to make him react like this, lose so much of that careless immortal arrogance he clings to as his paper shield, but he looks at me. His russet eye is dark, devoid of any shred of the amusement that always seems to be kindling there, like sparking embers.

“No. No you were perfect,” he tells me softly, his voice raw and hoarse, as though his throat has been stripped and ravaged, “But I...” he trails off, swallowing hard, another shudder rippling through him.

Now that he’s actually looking at me I can see how much of the colour has been leeched from his tanned skin. He’s chalk white, every line and hollow of his face a chasm, hollowed out by fear and pain. He looks ill, older than Prythian itself, the way he had the night we watched that faerie with the torn wings die; worse even.

“What’s _wrong_?” I ask him, a hint of fear coating my words but I can’t help it.

I’ve rarely seen him like this and I hate it. Tamlin had been wrong that day in the glen, Lucien hadn’t been all right, far from it.

He swallows hard again, his hands clenching tightly into fists as he fights to master himself. Finally, “Tam told you about, about Narra?” he speaks the last word, the last name, with such a fierce mixture of reverence and grief that my heart constricts painfully. I blink at him, opening my mouth slightly, thinking I know who she might be but not sure how to ask.

My uncertainty must have shown on my face because Lucien explains, every word tight, an effort to get out, as though his throat is reluctant to let them go, even now feeling that if he never speaks about it, if he never says it aloud it might still be undone, “Menarra, my, my mate,” I reach out and take his hand as something in him fractures and I squeeze tightly, as though I can somehow keep him from falling apart.

He covers our hands with his own and maybe my touch does give him some measure of strength or support because he manages to say, “He told you what my father did to her?”

“Briefly,” I admit with a sympathetic wince, letting him see a flicker of the pain I’ve been carrying around for him since Tamlin told me, “He said he had her executed and that, that he made you watch.”

A shadow passes over Lucien’s face so dark that for a moment his russet eye burns black, “She wasn’t High Fae,” he says, biting out each word in anger and bitterness, “He didn’t think that she was _worthy_ of me,” he spits out, shaking his head and his voice becomes distant and faint when he whispers, “It was the other way around. I was never worthy of her. She deserved someone better, someone who would have fought, someone who would have saved her, kept her safe...”

I stay quiet, knowing he doesn’t want my pity or my empty words. We both know they don’t do any good.

He closes his eyes, breathing slowly and deeply. When he opens them again his gaze burns as it pins me, “You’re human,” he rasps, his voice shaking as badly as he hands which curls into tight fists in a futile bid to stop them, “What he would do to you, I-“

The closed off look on his face makes me wonder what his father put his Menarra through for the crime of loving Lucien before he killed her in front of him. Bile rises in the back of my throat but I force it down to squeeze his arm and say as fiercely as I can, “He can’t hurt you, he can’t hurt _me_ -“ but he just shakes his head and pulls away from me, as though his touch will mark me with a target.

“That’s a risk I never should have taken,” he whispers, his body shaking again, “It was stupid and selfish and-“

“Look at me, Lucien,” I interrupt him, quiet but firm. I take his hand again and squeeze gently until he responds and does as I asked, “We’re safe here,” I say softly, “He won’t find out, he can’t and....” I hesitate, not wanting to say the next words but I need to for his sake, for what this is doing to him, “And this doesn’t have to go any further than tonight.”

He looks up at me, more sharply than I had expected and says, “I don’t want you to think I’d be happy to just toss you aside, that I got everything I wanted and now-this wasn’t- I wasn’t-“ I’ve never seen him so flustered before, “I wasn’t just using you, Feyre,” he says, with such urgency that I place my hands over his again.

“I know,” I tell him gently, _truthfully,_ then I let a wry smile tug at my lips as I shift in place slightly and add, “But it’s okay. I wasn’t really expecting a marriage proposal from you in the morning.”

He sits and watches me for a moment with that unnatural Fae stillness then his own lips split into an achingly familiar grin, “Really?” he quips, a feral smile lacing his lips“Because I thought that was good enough to have you on your knees begging me for one.”

I smirk back at him and shove him playfully before I sober and extend my hand to softly cup his cheek, “I want to. But if you don’t-“

“I do,” he interrupts me with a sincerity I would never have suspected he was capable of before tonight.

“If you _can’t_ ,” I amend forcefully, “Then I understand.”

He looks into my eyes for a long time then, “I shouldn’t,” he breathes, “Cauldron I shouldn’t, but...”he mirrors me, stretching out a hand and stroking my cheek with his thumb. I lean in to his touch as he whispers, “You have no idea how much you make me want to be selfish and stupid...So stupid.”

I huff out a laugh against his fingers, “What?” he asks, eyes widening.

I slide in a little closer to him and cup his face between both of my hands, “You make me feel the same way,” I murmur and then I kiss him again.

He kisses me back, fingers winding through my hair. And then he’s pushing me back and I’m pulling him down and our bodies are joined again within the space of a few quiet touches and murmured words. It’s slower this time, lazy almost, tender and indulgent.

Afterwards, his arms around me, cradling me to him, he murmurs onto my hair, “I don’t think I can stop it. Wanting this; wanting _you._ ”

“Good,” I say firmly onto his chest, “I don’t think I want you to.”

“Feyre,” he growls, a bite like a cracking whip in his voice when he says my name, “The danger this puts you in-“

“I’m willing to risk it,” I interrupt, bold and certain as I’ve rarely been before in my life. And I am. He makes me want to be reckless and selfish and happy with him in a way no-one else has ever made me feel.

“I’m not,” he says, shaking again, “I can’t go through that again. Not again. Not with you. I can’t.”

I nestle in against him, holding him, not wanting to talk about this or think about it right now while his arms are around me and his steady breathing that brought me so much comfort is slowly turning ragged, I just want him to be quiet and calm, to have this one night, one night where he can be free and feel safe and warm and shielded from the monsters in his past.

 “Can we just...Just be stupid and selfish for tonight and figure all of this out in the morning?” I ask him, eyes wide and beseeching.

He takes my chin between two fingers, tilting my face up to his, “Who are you and what have you done with Feyre?” he demands, his voice a low, serious growl though I can still detect the playful note he can’t hide.

I smile and arch up to kiss him, “I’m right here,” I murmur onto his lips, “With you,” his arm winds around my waist, palm resting flat on my back as he holds me to him, “Where I want to be,” I kiss him again, “And if you make me feel a little less alone, a little less vulnerable, a little more brave...Shouldn’t I want to keep that for as long as I can?” I whisper, shocked at the admission, at the stark candidness of my words.

Lucien blinks down at me then kisses me slowly, “Yes,” he whispers at last, relief and gratitude for this, for giving him this one night free of his ghosts, “We can,” he kisses me once more, long and deep in a slow in a way that tells me that, whatever his fears are, whatever demons are attempting to drown him in his past right now, he never wants this to stop and that when the morning comes, it will be my choice as to whether or not this continues, my choice if I’m willing to risk his father’s wrath for him.

 I am. I know in my bones, in my heart, in my soul that I am. For him; for this, I’m willing to risk everything I am for what I might become if allowed to grow in the safe shelter of his arms.

****

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :)


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